Beware of Anything

“You won’t believe it Oren. We were at the mall, and there was this huge billboard for tennis apparel. I took a look. Along with tennis racquets, there were tennis models. I was interested in getting a new racquet, but I was looking too long.”

“Your wife is really forgiving. If you explain to her that you were . . . “

“Sheila knew. She’s totally cool with it.”

“You mean, Evelyn thought you were looking too long?”

“Yeah, Shelia’s mom.”

“You’re toast, man.”

“At lunch, Sheila goes to change Joe’s diaper and my mother-in-law gets started. She goes, ‘Pete, it’s my birthday next month. Now, I have plenty in my life. It’s my family that needs something. I want to go to your loving wife and tell her she can have anything for $500. Then, I want you to go to your son and do likewise.’”

“That must have hurt.”

“My son wanted a candy bar. When Evelyn suggested we go to the Godiva store, Joe screamed ‘Snickers bar!’ My wife asked for the gold necklace with the amethyst pendant.”

“Okay. You had to pledge $1,000, but in the end it only cost you $400, and you don’t have to get your mother in law a birthday present.”

“Not really. Evelyn decided that I am to deliver the pendant necklace to Sheila over dinner, at Pierre’s Bistro.”

“Ouch. For that she should throw in Mother’s Day!”

When Anything is a Variable

I have seen the "anything trick" before. A company needs a website. They call up someone who says, “For this amount, I can do anything you want.”

It’s like the contractor who sees an empty apartment, and says the same.

On the surface, anything can mean whatever you want. Look a little bit deeper and you see the sand trap. Pete’s son was offered anything and he asked for a Snickers Bar. He could have asked for 10 cases of Snickers Bar’s but he didn't?

That's because he’s 2 years old.

His wife was wiser. She asked for fine jewelry.

Anything you want really means anything you know.

It’s important enough when you’re asking for something you are familiar with. It becomes critical when you are tasked with asking for something beyond the borders of your skillset.

A startup boss can develop the greatest application. When he wants to market it, he calls up a marketing consultancy. They say, “Sure, for $4,000 per month, we can give you anything you need.”

The challenge is when he realizes that his PHP is far ahead of his SEO.

If the marketing company gave him a 1-hour tutorial on what he needs to know to ask for, it says a lot more than the company that says ‘anything you want.’

When someone offers you anything, do something:

 1.      Research the topic yourself. Become familiar with the basics and make sure whomever you are asking covers them.

2.      Find the experts. It can be employees, friends, partners, people in your network. Make sure that someone who knows exactly what needs to be covered gets you up to speed. Once they tell you what you should expect, tailor those expectations to what you need.

They did say anything, right?

3.      Ask them. Give them an opportunity to earn your trust right off the bat. Ask them what you should be asking of them and how they can deliver it. If you are calling, say 4 different vendors for something, the one that gives you the most detailed answer is the one that gets the job.

TIP: You can also take the vendor with the best answers, and then call back the other candidates to see if they can match them.

Defining anything is a sure-fire way for a better ROI. A chocolate bar is nice, but for your effort, it’s always good to end up with a fine necklace at a French Bistro. 

Oren Eini is the CEO of RavenDB, a NoSQL Distributed Database, and RavenDB Cloud, its Managed Cloud Service (DBaaS). Oren is a Microsoft MVP and a DZone Hall of Famer with over 3.5 million views over ten years writing about NoSQL Database Technology, the .NET Ecosystem, and Software Development. He has been blogging for more than 15 years using his alias Ayende Rahien.